


In Good Conscience

by wallflowers



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, Complicated Relationships, Concerns over Medical Supply Chains, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mnemosurgery, Pre-War, Secret Solenoid, Wartime Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28464096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallflowers/pseuds/wallflowers
Summary: Ratchet could list off the reasons why he should join the Decepticons. Even so, something kept preventing him from taking up the badge. Secret Solenoid fic for rayguntomyhead!
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet
Comments: 21
Kudos: 92
Collections: Secret Solenoid '20-'21





	In Good Conscience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rayguntomyhead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayguntomyhead/gifts).



> “Pre-war Ratchet discussing the future and practical concerns with another medic” and “Dratchet working through a relationship being two vastly different people with different backgrounds and how that affects the ways they love each other” were both prompts I couldn’t resist, so I tried to fulfill them both. Navigating complicated relationships with a bittersweet tone and a sort of melancholy hope are some of my absolute favorite things to write, so this was a treat. I really hope you enjoy it~!

“Yeah, they put that in place in the middle of your shift,” Flatline said, looking at the red lock light on the metal medical supply storage cube.

It was at the end of said shift that Ratchet had found his standard supply access code being rejected, which prompted him to find Flatline—recently hired as the new ward manager, Ratchet’s recommendation—and drag him into the floor’s medical supply storage closet, demanding an explanation. 

“ _Limited prescription!?_ ” Ratchet tossed his hands up, flustered. “Anti-corrosion medipackets are nowhere _near_ being a controlled substance. What’s next, standard weld-patches? Who signed off on this?” 

Flatline shot him a sheepish look.

“The Senate ordered it.” He pulled a datapad out of his subspace, and began tabbing through its contents. “There’s a worker’s strike at the facility in Yuss where they make the packaging for the medipackets. Good for them, if you ask me. Apparently the facility isn’t even heated.”

Ratchet ex-vented heavily. He had been friends with Flatline since medical school. Flatline’s political bent hadn’t escaped his attention, nor did the scoffs or undermining that Flatline himself had faced during their residency—things that had both come increasingly to the forefront as the cycles passed. In his student days, Ratchet had preferred to focus on his work, and had hoped that eventually Flatline’s capability as as physician would’ve been recognized and he would have been able to do the same. Instead, Ratchet found the politics he once ignored continuously interfering with his work. He’d grown to suspect Flatline was a fair bit more perspicacious than him. If the Dead End taught Ratchet one thing, its that the rising tensions were hardly ever an isolated incident. It didn’t mean he could _do_ anything to fix it.

It was starting to keep him awake during his sparse recharge cycles. He’d lay there, turning it over and over in his processor fruitlessly. He’d begun getting comments that he looked tired, even more than usual. 

“One facility striking doesn’t explain this,” Ratchet huffed, crossing his arms and frowning at the _DENIED: LIMITED PRESCRIPTION_ error on the screen nestled in the side of the storage locker unit.

“It’s part of the Senate’s crackdown policy in response to the strike. Here.” 

Flatline held out his datapad. Ratchet glanced up at Flatline’s face before he took the datapad, scanning through the announcement pulled up on the screen. He felt his fuel pump drop.

“… They’re enacting a _class restriction_ ,” Ratchet read aloud in disbelief.

“They think the idea for a strike was seeded by the Decepticons and want to punish any Decepticon-sympathizers,” Flatline said, his own field rippling with frustration. “Apparently, ‘Decepticon’ has become synonymous with ‘lower-class’. The idea being ‘if you won’t make these supplies, you don’t get to receive the basic treatment that uses them’.” 

Ratchet continued scrolling through the announcement. He reached a list; a quick skim showed them overwhelmingly to be what he would consider _basic_ medical supplies, the sort of thing Ratchet himself used to smuggle out of the clinic on occasion that one of his Dead End patients needed it badly and his own stock there had dwindled, relying on their ubiquity to cover his tracks. Now, these things were to be clearly labeled, traced, and strictly for patients of the Intellectual, Astro, Military, and Scientific classes, with the alt-mode exempt being allowed prescriptions on a closely-reviewed ‘case-to-case basis’. Medical treatment of any other class was now considered a ’waste of resources’—something the Disposable class had been declared long ago. 

“This is insanity,” Ratchet muttered. 

“Tell that to the Senate,” Flatline said. Then he shook his head. “That was rhetorical, for the record.”

“I _should_ give them a piece of my mind,” Ratchet seethed.

“No you shouldn’t.”

“How do they think this is going to help _anything?_ How is denying people standard medical care supposed to help pacify tensions!? No, you know what, you’re right. Someone needs to—”

“ _Nope_ nope nope.” Flatline caught his arm as he tried to march out the storage room door. “You are _not_ getting yourself locked up.”

“ _Someone_ needs to tell them how idiotic this is.” 

“Ratchet they’re not going to listen.”

“I’m the damned personal surgeon for the Prime,” Ratchet scoffed, not thinking about how he was unsure about he felt about his _esteemed_ position. “If they’re not going to listen to me then _who?_ ” 

“No one,” Flatline replied immediately. “They’re not going to listen to _anyone_ because they _don’t care._ Yelling at them will do nothing. They’ll make an example of our hospital. Or worse, out of _you._ ” The last point was emphasized with a poke to Ratchet’s chestplates. 

Or they’ll look too closely and discover that until recently, Ratchet had been running a _pro-bono_ clinic in the Dead End, treating people that the Senate _wanted_ to die off. Ratchet had a feeling he knew what sort of punishment they’d enact his flirtation with breaking the law. Empurata was always a useful _visual aid_ when the Senate wanted to ‘make an example’. 

“Something has to change,” Ratchet muttered. 

“More like something’s gotta give. I don’t know how this can get turned around this far down the road,” Flatline said, shaking his head. “The A.V.L, triple-M, the Malware Brigade? They’re all Decepticons now. This is not going to fade into the backdrop, not while so many have nothing left to lose.”

Ratchet knew a thing or two about mechs who had nothing left to lose. He might not know anyone from the insurgency groups Flatline listed off, but he _did_ know the Dead Enders, and they’d been given no other option but to fight if they wanted something to live for. 

“Be careful,” Ratchet warned. “If someone hears you talking like that—”

Flatline gave him a look. It occurred to Ratchet then that his honest concern over being somehow overheard in the nearly-empty clinic’s sealed medical storage closet on the off-shift said something about the state of things. 

“I should get going,” Flatline said. “You should too.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I will after I finish tidying up this mess.” Ratchet waved him off.

Flatline made a sound, prompting Ratchet to look up. He stood on the threshold, arms crossed.

“Listen, Ratch. If I know you as well as I think I do, then I know that deep down, you’re never going to be happy to sleeping in a berth someone made up for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ratchet asked.

Flatline shrugged. “Just something to think about, is all.”

* * *

Ratchet did think about it — he _kept_ thinking about it, as the conflict in the streets seemed to steadily spiral towards war. The Senate was culled off in a terrorist attack in Kaon and replaced with something worse. Zeta Prime took control. Blame was pinned on the Decepticons. Medics were banned from treating identified members of the Decepticon movement under threat of their medical license being revoked. It was incentive, the Prime said, for the Decepticons to register themselves as a political party and make their demands in a civilized fashion on even ground; until then, they were considered terrorists, and the new Senate did not negotiate with terrorists. 

Of course, it was easier to stop people from sympathizing with the homeless, the starving, the overworked and underpaid when you called them terrorists. It didn’t change what they really were—people who needed help that they were now barred from offering. 

The hypocrisy was thick. Apparently Ratchet had more tolerance for it than Flatline, who quit soon after the ban was enacted. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Ratchet didn’t know where Flatline had ended up and hadn’t heard from him since; he found himself scanning the crowds when the news holovids reported on clashes in the streets between Decepticon protestors and Zeta’s enforcers, looking for familiar broad shoulders and red-and-black plating.

He didn’t see Flatline. He did, however, see the familiar faces of the few Dead Enders who he’d grown to know by name during his time running the clinic. It fueled the nagging feeling that he was on the wrong side, and that if he didn’t act soon he wouldn’t get the choice to. But Ratchet stayed. He continued working his shifts, treating the handful of privileged mechs who the Senate deemed worthy of their time and resources. All the while, he thought about the Dead End; about a speedster with a foul mouth, gold optics, and a sweet, wry grin.

Ratchet only suspected Flatline was a Decepticon, but he _knew_ Drift was. He went by the name Deadlock, these days. Ratchet could understand his want to change his designation—to distance himself from his past now that he’d found some stability, perhaps—but part of him thought it was a shame nonetheless. He hadn’t kept in contact so much as Deadlock sent him the occasional, sporadic message, updating him vaguely on what had been happening, giving him nothing to pin where Deadlock might _be,_ and wishing him well before going dark for cycles at a time. As cycles passed, the messages became frustrated as Deadlock wrangled with Ratchet’s reasoning for continuing to serve the new Senate, even though he only wore the Autobot badge as a requirement of his service as the Prime’s personal doctor. But all of Deadlock’s messages were encrypted. Ratchet had no way of messaging back, not without a reception code, and had no other means of contacting the gunner.

Ratchet's resentment continued to grow; with each ping from Deadlock, with each patient of his who expected to receive top-quality care without thinking what their lives would be like without it, with each new restriction on who he could and couldn’t treat, to the point that Ratchet was nearly ready to toss down his scalpel and join the Decepticons in spite of his doubts and the rumors. The thought was appealing, that he’d be able to look Deadlock in the optic and dispel all the speedster’s ill-conceptions of him in one fell swoop with a purple badge on his chest.

Then, Bludgeon happened. 

* * *

Ratchet sat heavily on his berth and stared, unseeing, at the wall. He’d escaped the concerned company of Orion Pax and the others the moment they’d let him, overwhelmed and wanting nothing more than some privacy to sort through his processor and… assess the damage.

He’d expected to crumple apart when he was finally alone. Instead, he felt oddly numb, as though he were waiting for something else to come crashing down on his head. 

Sorting through his files in the least gave him something to do. Bludgeon’s lack of experience with mnemosurgery was obvious; the superficial damage he left behind laced the path he’d taken through Ratchet’s processor. Even having followed it, Ratchet wasn’t certain what he’d been _looking_ for—he kept tracing the shallow damage, looking for something deeper, anything that seemed out of place. Part of Ratchet couldn’t grasp that he seemed to have been subject to nothing more than happenstance experiment. There had to have been _something_.

Then maybe his emotional processes would finally catch up with the rest of him, and he could stop grasping for some sort of catharsis. 

There was a tap at the glass doors that led to his flat’s balcony. Ratchet startled, his frame reacting before his processor could even place the sound. A hand planted on his chest, he willed his systems to calm down. Another tap. Cautiously, he stood from his berth and crept over to the glass doors, prepared to run if he needed to.

Deadlock was on the tiny balcony outside, sitting on the railing. Ratchet reset his optics in disbelief. Deadlock grinned.

“Thought you were gonna leave me hangin’ for a second there, doc,” Deadlock drawled as Ratchet slid the door open.

“You idiot! Get over here before you fall to your death!” Ratchet grabbed his arm and hauled the laughing speedster inside. “What were you thinking!?”

“Wanted to see you,” Deadlock replied, as though that justified him climbing to the _tenth floor_ of the housing block. 

“Well, here I am.” Ratchet spread his hands, gesturing to his frame. “Take it in.” 

Deadlock looked him over as though he were searching for something. 

“What?” Ratchet prompted, irritation laced in his tone in spite his effort to seem neutral.

“I heard what happened,” Deadlock said. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I—” Ratchet’s vocalizer clicked. He didn’t know how to answer that. Objectively, he was _fine_ —the damage was superficial, his systems having repaired the most of it already. He didn’t _feel_ fine. His frame shuddered as he ex-vented and rubbed at his optics.

“Ratchet…” he felt Deadlock’s hand on his elbow, soothingly rubbing at his plating.

His emotional processors stopped turning over and settled on _something._ A sob worked its way out of Ratchet’s vocalizer, catching him off guard. He buried his face in his hands, curling in on himself. Deadlock caught Ratchet as his knees buckled. Deadlock's engine rumbled, angry and low, but his field was sweet, embracing Ratchet as surely and protectively as his arms were. 

“’s okay. I’m here,” Deadlock hushed. “’s okay, you’re gonna be okay.”

Deadlock held him tight, continuing to mutter low, comforting sweet nothings as Ratchet struggled to pull himself back together again. He hated anyone seeing him like this, but he supposed it could be worse; Ratchet doubted _Drift of Rodion_ would pass any judgement. Maybe the vulnerability would pay off that nonexistent debt he was always going on about.

“Are you hurt?” Deadlock asked, in the long silence after Ratchet had wrangled his emotions into something he could handle. 

"No," Ratchet responded. "I don't think so. Nothing important at least."

Bludgeon hadn't changed his personality, or removed his medical knowledge. Ratchet wasn't certain about the integrity of his memories, but he hadn't run into anyone yet who claimed to know him that he couldn't remember. Bludgeon hadn't changed anything, as far as Ratchet could tell.

The threat was enough. Ratchet shuddered and leaned further into Deadlock’s embrace. Deadlock’s arms around him tightened a fraction.

"He won't be coming 'round here no more. He won't be botherin' you. No one will," Deadlock assured him. Ratchet couldn't see his expression. His tone promised violence.

"Not sure how you're going to manage that one, kid." Ratchet's words were muffled, spoken into the curve of Deadlock's neck and shoulder.

"I'll manage," Deadlock muttered, lips just beside Ratchet's audial. "If I gotta walk you home every night, that won't be nothin' new."

"Every night."

"Mm-hmm. Did it enough in the Dead End. I’ll figure it out.” With his free hand, Deadlock caught one of Ratchet's own, holding it as he began to sway, turning their embrace into something that resembled a slow dance. His other hand remained on the back of Ratchet's neck, curled over the scars left by the forceful injection—shielding, not threatening. Ratchet lifted his hand and let it rest softly on Deadlock's waist.

"On opposite sides of a war."

"You thinkin' it's a war now, doc?"

"Not sure what else you'd call it."

Deadlock hummed, resting his temple against the curve of Ratchet's helm.

"Thought you were angry with me," Ratchet said.

"I was." Deadlock sighed. He stopped swaying. "I still am. I’m mad at myself too, though.”

“What for?”

“For not bein’ able to protect you. And for thinkin’ this was gonna go any other way.” 

Ratchet pulled back to look Deadlock in the optic. Hiding the hurt from his field didn’t even cross his processor. Deadlock didn’t look angry, however. He looked sad. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ratchet snapped. He was still on edge from what he went through earlier that cycle. He didn’t have the patience for Drift’s tendency to be obtuse.

Deadlock raised his optics to the ceiling, searching, as though he would find the words he wanted to say written there. It ticked Ratchet off. Could the gunner not even look him in the optic anymore? Did Ratchet _disappoint_ him that much? Why was he even here?

“Forget it.” He disentangled himself from Deadlock, intent on leaving, not caring where he went so long as it wasn’t here.

“Doc wait—”

“I don’t want to hear it _Deadlock_.”

“Ratchet.” A hand caught his wrist, firm, but gentle enough that Ratchet could break out of it if he tried.“I didn’t mean that as a… dig at you or somethin’. Please.” 

Ratchet turned, glaring at the hand that circled his wrist. Cautiously, Deadlock released his wrist, as though he expected Ratchet to bolt the second he was free. Instead, Ratchet crossed his arms, still refusing to look at Deadlock directly.

“Then tell me what you meant by that,” Ratchet demanded.

“You’re a good person. You helped us. No one else would, not even most of the mechs who’ve joined the Decepticons since. None of us from the Dead End are about to forget that. You didn’t deserve what you just went through. That _ain’t_ happenin’ again, not ever. But… you’re a topsider. At the end of the day, you had somewhere else to go home to. I was kiddin’ myself thinkin’ you were gonna give that stability up for the Decepticons. That’s not how it works. An’ now that chance is dead an’ gone, for fair reason.” 

“Drift—” Ratchet’s protest was silenced by Deadlock’s finger pressed to his lips. 

“We’ve all got our vices.” He gave Ratchet a smile that looked like it hurt. “You know, a lot of the mechs in the Dead End weren’t good. It wasn’t only gutter-tourists who beat the slag out of me. That’d be easier, to have an obvious enemy to pin the blame on. Life isn’t like that though. It’s messy. So yeah, some of the mechs who call themselves Decepticons, they’re mechs who enjoy hurtin’ others. They _like_ it. They’ve got their own reasons for joining the Decepticons, and sometimes it has a lot more to do with destroyin’ things they don’t like than it is for the good of the people.”

“Is this the part where you say they’re a necessary evil?” Ratchet asked, tiredly. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having, but it was too late for that now. He’d been the one who’d insisted on it.

“No.” Deadlock leaned close. “This is the part where I say there’s _more of them_ on your side of things. Because it’s easier to get away with that slag with the law protectin’ them. Megatron’s been holdin’ people responsible. He’s lookin’ into creatin’ a team specifically to prevent this sort of thing from continuin’. We’re fielding candidates right now. Bludgeon isn’t about to get away with what he did.”

“The Autobots hold people responsible,” Ratchet defended.

Deadlock gave him a look, gold optics intense as the they held Ratchet’s own.

“Do they, really?” he asked, quietly.

Ratchet’s protestations were caught on his tongue as his processor helpfully offered examples of when they _didn’t._

“You’re a good person Ratchet. Most people _aren’t_.” Deadlock cupped the side of Ratchet’s helm in his hand, running a thumb over his cheek. “It’d be easier to protect you with you nearby.” 

“What Megatron is advocating for is violence for violence,” Ratchet said. “He might’ve been a good mech when you first met him—I thought he was back then, with those writings of his. He’s changed. Maybe the arena did that to him, I don’t know. I _get_ it, I do, but revenge isn’t going to fix things.”

Deadlock frowned. “Megatron’s not—”

“Did the Decepticons kill the Senate, Drift?” Ratchet interrupted, the question he’d been wanting to ask for so long forced out into the space between them.

Deadlock said nothing as he pulled his hand away. His optics dropped to the floor, unable to look at him. 

Ratchet’s fuel pump felt as though it were jammed in his throat. He realized that some part of him had been desperately hoping Drift could say _no_ , tell him that they had no part in the slaughter, that it was the work of Functionist extremists or some other fringe group. Fundamentally, the Decepticon cause was one Ratchet sympathized with, heavily. He wanted to be able to support it. He wanted to believe that Bludgeon had been the bad energon in the batch. He didn’t _want_ to condemn people he knew, first-hand, had little other option, mechs he felt now were being taken advantage of by a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control. 

In spite of this, he couldn’t wrestle his conscience down and throw his lot in with the Decepticons as they were now. The ends would never justify the means. 

Ratchet shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” Ratchet said, as Deadlock looked him in the optics again.

“Yeah. Me too,” Deadlock replied, quietly.

Ratchet reached out, then hesitated, before he gave into impulse and pulled Deadlock into a kiss. It was a desperate press of lips that Deadlock reciprocated immediately, following Ratchet's lead as he gentled it into something soft and sweet. Deadlock made a pained sound, but he reached up to cup Ratchet's face, fingertips curling around the base of his helm, holding him close when he made to part. Ratchet was more than fine with that, satisfied to take refuge in Drift’s warmth, in his honest but clumsy kiss, to exist in this one moment where he could let himself not think about the threatening weight of everything that hung above them. 

Perhaps Megatron would turn out to be the conscientious leader Drift said he was. Perhaps there would come a day Ratchet could in good faith join them, so that he didn’t have to stand on the other side of a war than someone who was quickly growing to mean much more to Ratchet than he’d ever foresaw, someone who seemed just as reluctant as he was to give… whatever this was up.

He felt Drift smile against his lips, in spite of everything.

**Author's Note:**

> [1/9/2021] Hmm. I... hmm. This reads as being very on-the-nose, now.


End file.
